On 06/12/2007, at 11:09 AM, Nick Arnett wrote: > >> those systems through a few simple rules is a challenge, but not >> beyond our capacity. Interestingly, some of the most successful work >> has come out of games and movies - SimCity exhibits some emergence, >> and CGI crowd/battle scenes > > > Oh, I gotta disagree about what we can calculate. Take the simplest > sort of > rule system -- a binary network -- and if it is big enough to be > interesting, there isn't enough time and computing power in the life > of the > universe to examine the possible states.
Oh, I see what you mean. Well, yes if you're talking on that scale. But at smaller scales, look at some of what's been done in Game of Life, building computational devices and so on. And then we (well not me...) can build systems that treat those computational devices as agents within a larger scale sim. So we have some shortcuts to help ameliorate some of the pure scale issues. > Unless there's been some > breakthrough I haven't heard about, nobody has come up with an > algorithmic > solution, either.... but when if and when somebody does, it'll be > huge. > Nobody has figured out how to mathematically describe the observable > way the > models cycle through similar (attractor) states. Perhaps with quantum > computing... Yep, that'll be the big one. Although it'll render PGP useless... > > > >> >> Especially interesting >> is actually the pre-evolutionary field of abiogenesis, where >> hypercycles may turn out to explain how a set of complex interactions >> of molecules could bootstrap out of the prebiotic chemical soup. > > > This is where Kauffman opened my eyes... replicators like to > replicate and > all that. But it's not Darwinism Arrgh. No, it's not "Darwinism". But it isn't outside of evolutionary theory either! > -- unless everything that we observe is > getting tossed into the "Darwinism" bucket to fight off the ID > people, which > might be politically useful, but confusing. No!!! Stop saying "Darwinism"! > > >> >> >> Yes. But that's describing behaviour, not evolution (which is simply >> changes in gene frequencies in a population over time). > > > That strikes me as a surprisingly narrow definition and not at all > common in > my reading. It's the "fact" of evolution - given a breeding population with imperfect inheritance, gene frequencies will change over time. That's all evolution actually is. Now, charting how that's manifested itself over the history of life on Earth is one huge area of study (also known as evolution but really genealogy writ extremely large), and how variability and selection and so on work is another area of study (also shorthanded to evolution, but really evolutionary theory). > > > >> Now, there's >> some speculation that DNA has a bit more going on than just a gene >> carrier: - it's been postulated that interactions of genes can act in >> a self-organising way, or even as a form of calculating device, a >> genetic computer. But this is controversial, and it's going to take a >> lot of work to show this. Interesting line of study, however. > > > And just what Kauffman (or is it Axelrod) suggests is signified by the > mathematical relationships between gene counts and cell > differentiation > counts, if I am remembering it correctly. I'm struggling to recall > (and > away from my books), but isn't the mechanism of cell differentiation > still > quite a mystery? It's imperfectly understood, but when I was an undergraduate we learnt a fair bit about it, and in the 15 years since everything I learnt has been superceded. It's the fastest moving field in biology, as I mentioned in a previous post. > Of course, with all the stem cell research going on, > perhaps there's a lot of new evidence coming out all the time. Stem cells, and other biological models. The main ones used are the nematode worm _C. elegans_ and the zebrafish. Charlie. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
